Why Is Classroom Management So Vexing to Urban Teachers?

Why is classroom management especially problematic for urban teachers, and why has research yielded so few helpful answers to this question? In this article I take up both questions, suggesting that the answer to both emanates from the same source: the reliance on deficit paradigms to explain underachievement of students who have historically not been served well by urban schools. I explain why teachers who create orderly classrooms that are academically demanding must establish and reinforce social norms in their classrooms that contravene the deficit paradigm, the dominant ideology of most urban schools. The article concludes with an examination of how my theory is illustrated by reframing, a technique for changing problem behavior in schools.